In December 2004, Arnt "Obsidian Claw" Grønbech, along with Steinar "Azarak" Gundersen, who were playing live for Satyricon in their North American tour, were arrested in Canada and accused of drugging and raping a woman in their tour bus after a show in Toronto. The remainder of the tour was cancelled. The two members were released from jail on bail and later the charges for rape were dismissed.

Keep Of Kalessin participated in the Mayhem tribute Originators Of The Northern Darkness, released by Avantgarde Music in 2001, covering the song "Buried By Time And Dust".

The band applied to represent Norway in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2010, one year after Norwegian folk pop artist Alexander Rybak has won the ESC and brought the contest to Oslo. In the national preliminaries, the so-called Melodi Grand Prix, the band performed "The Dragontower" in the first of 3 semi-final rounds and advanced to the Gold Final round, where the band finished in 3rd place overall through a combined viewer and jury vote.

During the intermission of Semi-Finals #1 of Melodi Grand Prix 2011 the band and Alexander Rybak performed the Keep of Kalessin song "The Divine Land" together, with Rybak handling the violin and background vocals. This performance can be viewed here.

The name Keep Of Kalessin comes from Ursula K. Le Guin's novel The Farthest Shore, which is book 3 of the Earthsea Trilogy. It is an island home to the eldest dragon of all of Earthsea, named Kalessin, and is, "an island like a tower. Its cliffs were black and made up of many cylinders or great pillars pressed together, with straight edges and plane surfaces, rising three hundred feet sheer from the water."

Many of their lyrics revolve around this book series.